


How to Annoy the God of Mischief, by Astrid Hofferson

by certain_as_the_sun



Series: How to Train Your God of Mischief [3]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Astrid Gets Suspicious, Gen, Hiccup is Awful at Keeping Secrets, Loki is Not Amused, Loki is Toothless, The Avengers (2012) Never Happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:03:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6364186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/certain_as_the_sun/pseuds/certain_as_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Astrid notices something odd about Hiccup and Toothless, and Loki discovers the only thing worse than an annoying human boy is an annoying human girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Annoy the God of Mischief, by Astrid Hofferson

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place a week or two after _A Revelation in the Light of Day_. It was meant to be longer and I meant to finish it sooner, but Easter happened and I forgot all about writing.

If you'd asked Astrid a few months ago who in the village would be least capable of keeping a secret, she'd have answered "Hiccup" without even stopping to think. The business with Toothless had slightly shaken her conviction that he couldn't keep a secret to save his life, but since it had been obvious he was keeping a secret, she continued to hold to her original belief. And now he was doing it again.

It was small, easily dismissed things at first. Then it became more and more obvious, and finally Astrid couldn't ignore it any more. The way he acted as if Toothless could understand him. The sidelong, mildly alarmed glances he'd give the dragon when dinnertime conversations turned to myths. The way he'd cut himself off in mid-sentence when he started to say something about Toothless. The way he'd talk to his dragon as if he expected an answer and sometimes almost forgot his name (the dragon's, that is; not even Hiccup was stupid enough to forget his _own_ name). The time she was just back from a longer-than-usual ride with Stormfly and could have sworn she saw a strange man looking out Hiccup's window.

No one else seemed to have noticed anything odd. Of course, since there were times she honestly believed she was the only person in the village with more intelligence than a sheep (Hiccup came a very, _very_ distant second), this wasn't really surprising. But she noticed it, and she drew her own conclusions. Hiccup was keeping a secret. Maybe he was hiding someone in his room for reasons she did _not_ want to think about. Whatever it was, he had a secret, Toothless had something to do with it, and she'd find out what it was if it killed her.

So, she started following them everywhere.

 

* * *

 

  
It was pitiful. Astrid honestly believed she was being inconspicuous in her stalking, but Loki noticed her almost the moment she started. Hiccup remained oblivious, which was annoying but not surprising. There were times when he swore the Bifröst could have opened and a battalion of Æsir warriors appeared right in front of the boy, and he wouldn't have noticed a thing until he fell over them.

Hiccup was currently working on his map, Astrid was hiding behind a tree and occasionally looking round it, and Loki was pretending to be asleep. The problem with revealing his true nature to Hiccup was that the boy now alternated between talking to him as if he was just an ordinary dragon and treating him with as much reverence as the average Asgardian showed to the All-Father. It was comical at times, annoying at others, and could get them both in trouble if anyone else noticed. So, Loki pretended he was asleep when there was anyone around. Hiccup still talked to (or at) him, but at such times he usually acted as if his dragon wasn't really the God of Mischief in disguise.

Hiccup kept up a steady stream of chatter about this or that island and whether or not he should add animals found in a certain area to the map. Loki half-listened and took note of the comments he'd answer when he resumed his Æsir form tonight. Astrid listened intently to every word, and looked remarkably disappointed about something.

Hopefully she'd been so bored by the disjointed lecture in cartography that she'd give up.

 

* * *

 

 

She didn't.

Loki debated telling Hiccup about it. He decided to let him figure it out for himself.

 

* * *

 

This was becoming tedious. No matter where they were, Astrid followed them. On the rare occasions Hiccup noticed her, he didn't think there was anything odd about her presence. It was understandable when she showed up in Gobber's forge, but he should have suspected something when they met her in a forest over a mile from Berk.

There were times when Loki wanted nothing more than to slap some sense into that boy.

Just to add to his annoyance, he couldn't think of any reason for her to follow them. She couldn't possibly think that Hiccup was seeing another girl, since the only other girl not ten years older or younger than him was Ruffnut, and frankly, if Loki had to choose between sleeping with Ruffnut or an eldjötunn, he'd choose the eldjötunn any day.

So why in Odin's name wouldn't she _leave them alone_?

 

* * *

 

While in Asgard Loki had never thought that humans could harm an Æsir. Since coming to Midgard he'd been forced to revise that idea. Humans might not be able to physically harm an Æsir, but they certainly could drive one insane.

Astrid had finally realised her stalking was getting her nowhere, so she confronted Hiccup. It turned out that she'd noticed the way he acted around Loki since finding out who he really was. Hiccup denied everything, and couldn't have looked or sounded more suspicious if he'd murdered someone. Loki would have _words_ with the brat about this as soon as she left.

Tonight, he had an irritating human girl to deal with.

 

* * *

 

Astrid had trained to be a warrior since she was old enough to hold an axe. A side-effect of all that training was that she could wake up instantly if there was someone nearby.

There was someone nearby now.

She reached slowly for the axe she kept by her bed, trying not to draw attention to herself. Whoever was in her room couldn't be her parents; they were away somewhere or other and wouldn't be back until the morning, and they would have spoken to her by now anyway. It couldn't be Stormfly, because her parents refused to let a dragon in the house. No one else was allowed in her room and there was no sound outside to indicate an emergency of some sort, so she could only assume the intruder was hostile.

"Don't think I can't see you," a distinctly unimpressed - and decidedly male - voice said from somewhere near the door.

She tried to hurl the axe at the speaker, but it pulled itself out of her hand and floated away into the darkness. Even by Berkian standards, animated weaponry was highly unusual (if you believed Gobber's drunken stories lately, it was by no means an _unheard of_ occurrence, but no one believed anything he said after more than a cup of mead). Astrid stared after it, her mouth hanging open.

"Stop gaping like a dead fish, human!" the voice snapped.

There was a movement over by the door, and something moved out into the light. Astrid blinked.

" _Toothless_? Were you just - Can you - Dammit, the twins must've put mead in my drink again!"

A faint green light fell on Hiccup's dragon, and then the dragon was gone and a strange man was in its place.

"I assure you, you are neither drunk nor asleep," he told her while she was still trying to process this. From the way he acted you'd have thought there was nothing in the slightest bit out of the ordinary about dragons turning into men. "I am Loki of Asgard, and I have come to order you to stop your pitiful attempts to stalk me and my human."

Not unlike Hiccup before her, the first thing Astrid could think of to say was, "You can't be the real Loki. You don't have red hair."

The man who claimed to be a god scowled fiercely - though it didn't look like his anger was aimed at her. She remembered the flying axe and suddenly felt very, very worried.

"The stories your people tell of me are always embellished and often outright fabricated. I would not rely on them as a source of information. Whatever you believe, I am Loki, and you _will_ leave Hiccup and I alone. This will be your only warning. If you disregard it, I guarantee that you will find yourself in highly embarrassing situations."

And just like that, he vanished.

Astrid had some difficulty getting back to sleep afterwards.

 

* * *

 

Hiccup was jolted out of the clutches of a nightmare by someone throwing icy water over him. He sat up with a yelp, and then realised he was completely dry. He shot a glare at the only possible culprit, who was grinning like a lunatic.

"That's not funny."

Loki gave him an innocent smile that showed far too many teeth to be non-threatening. "But it _worked_."

Hiccup eyed him, worried. The only time the god ever looked like that was when he'd done something that he considered funny and everyone else would consider alarming at best and terrifying at worst. Waking Hiccup couldn't be the only reason; he did that every time he had a nightmare (in other words, at least once every night). "What did you do?"

Loki's smile morphed into a smirk. "Don't worry, you wouldn't object to it. A certain human was annoying me, so I took steps to remedy the situation."

"Oh." It took a moment for those words to sink in. Hiccup's eyes widened. "No, really, Loki, _what did you do_?"

A laugh was the only answer he got.

**Author's Note:**

> In Norse mythology, "eldjötnar" (or "Múspellsmegir") is another name for the fire jötnar, the inhabitants of Muspelheim.
> 
> Something that just bugs me about Astrid's surname: the Norse did not use inherited surnames like Britain or America, they used patronyms (father's name + "son" or "dottir") or matronyms (mother's name + "son" or "dottir"), which are still used in Iceland and parts of the Faroe Islands. Astrid's surname should be "Hofferdottir", not "Hofferson". Of course, in the HTTYD 'verse, Vikings have names like "Stoick" and "Hiccup"...


End file.
